Knight's Cross; A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel Hardcover - 1993

New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. good. xv, [1], 601, [7] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix: Chronology. Bibliography. Notes. Index. Some wear to board and spine edges. General Sir David William Fraser, GCB, OBE (30 December 1920 - 15 July 2012) was a senior British Army officer who served as Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies from 1978 until his retirement from military service in 1980. He was also a prolific author, publishing over 20 books mostly focused on the history of the Second World War. In the last two years of the Second World War, he was involved in the North West Europe Campaign. He served as a company commander in the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards in the Malayan Emergency of 1948. He was involved in the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Cyprus Emergency in 1958. Fraser was posted to the Ministry of Defence as Director of Defence Policy (Army) from December 1966 until 1969. He was appointed General Officer Commanding 4th Division in 1969, and Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Policy) in 1971. He was Vice Chief of the General Staff from April 1973. He went on to be UK Military Representative to NATO in 1975, and Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies in 1978 before retiring in 1980. In any numbering of the great captains of history, the name of Erwin Rommel must stand in the first rank. He was the outstanding Axis field commander of the Second World War, and was respected, even admired, as well as feared by his opponents. Here was a supremely professional solder: chivalrous, decent, untainted by the crimes of the Nazi regime, carrying out his duty with often dazzling success. David Fraser's book--surely the definitive study--brings to Rommel's career not only the perceptions of an acclaimed biographer, but those of a distinguished soldier too: his insights into Rommel's mind and methods carry the authority of experience. He shows how inspiringly spontaneous and superficially haphazard Rommel's style of leadership could be. His hallmarks were boldness of maneuver, ferocity in attack, and tenacity in pursuit. These were the qualities he displayed in his great battles in the North African desert; they were evident from his earliest battles in the First World War to his last, defending Fortress Europe from the Allied invasion of 1944. This is, first and foremost, a biography of a soldier. But Rommel reached a position in which he almost inevitably became embroiled in politics. When he realized that the Allied invasion was going to succeed, he realized also that the only way to save Germany was somehow to negotiate a peace settlement. He tried to present Hitler--to whom he had always been devoted, and who had always shown him a particular respect and affection--with the military realities: he was branded a defeatist and ignored. But his opinions, and his apparent links with the Stauffenberg plotters of July 1944--one of them, under interrogation, mentioned Rommel as a possible head of post-Hitlerian Germany--condemned him in the eyes of the Führer he had served so loyally. He was offered the choice of trial by a People's Court--a sham of course--or suicide, a state funeral and protection for his family. He chose the latter.